


Stupid Holiday

by Ilthit



Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Gen, Valentine's Day, Wordcount: 1.000-5.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-16
Updated: 2019-06-16
Packaged: 2020-05-13 04:16:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19243657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ilthit/pseuds/Ilthit
Summary: Tuuri decides to celebrate Valentine’s Day, Finnish style.





	Stupid Holiday

**Author's Note:**

> Written to fill a square in a trope bingo card for Valentine's Day. 
> 
> A touch of Emil/Lalli and Tuuri/Sigrun bur only if that’s what you want to read into it.

It was a wet, sloshy day. There was no real concern for trolls thawing, however, as the week before had been snowbound and harsh. Spring wouldn’t be here for a while yet. Tuuri added a note about the weather to the day’s log entry. Fourteenth of February… Wasn’t there something special about that day?

“Oh!” she said aloud in Finnish. “It’s Friend’s Day.”

A croggy Lalli next to her by the radio station shrugged. He’d been out all night and was finishing a snack of crackers and some of Mikkel’s dubious protein paste on his cousin’s insistence, his hair still wet from the bath. 

“Can you give a Friend’s Day card to your teammates?” Tuuri mused. “Technically, right? We wouldn’t do it in Keuruu, but that was the _real_ military… Although I suppose technically this is, as well? Just not a military expedition.” 

“It’s a stupid holiday,” said Lalli. 

“No, it’s not!”

Lalli pushed aside the plate of crackers, half-eaten—which already had to be counted a success. “I don’t have any friends. You do it if you want to.” With that, he stalked off into the sleeping area of the tank and crawled into his lair under the bed.

Tuuri finished the log entry half-heartedly, then put on her mask, took up her private notebook, and ventured outside. She threw pebbles down the incline they’d parked on and watched them roll down towards the road clogged with old world vehicles. Nature had begun to creep up on the rows of cars, saplings growing in the cracks on the asphalt, the roots of older trees pushing the cracks wider still. It wasn’t safe this close to all those dead bodies, even if Sigrun said cars would freeze over and kill anything in it in winter, but Lalli had given them the all-clear for now, and they had Kisu and two mages to warn them of any funny business. And true enough, the night had passed without incident, and Sigrun had a plan of raiding the cars for oil and tools in the morning before they pushed on. 

She contemplated the skyline. Lalli didn’t get to tell her which holidays were stupid. _He_ was stupid. Tuuri hadn’t had a lot of really good friends in Keuruu. And the friends she’d had before, she would never get to see again in this world.

She opened a fresh page of her notebook and started drawing. 

-

Mikkel set down two buckets of sloshy but mostly clean snow next to the bath-tub. There were stones heating up on the fire along with the stew that would go in with the snow in a moment to melt it down faster. He stalked back up to the fire to stoke it, and a piece of white caught his eye. A folded note was stuck on the supply crate that had become his sole domain since the mission had begun. He unfolded it, read it, admired the drawing, and stuck into his pocket, smiling to himself.

Sigrun emerged from the tank, still rubbing the sleep from her eyes. She had been on guard duty outside the tank all night while Lalli scouted farther afield. She blinked blearily at a similar note in her hand, frowned at it, set her jaw tight, glanced around, and stuffed it deep inside her coat pocket. 

The stew for their lunch was coming along nicely, the fat bubbling and floating to the top, when Emil came stomping up to the fire. “Mikkel! I have a stupid problem.”

“Tell me all, young one.”

Emil plopped himself on a fold-out seat on the other side of the pot. “I think Tuuri has a crush on me.”

“Oh?”

Emil spread his hands. “What do I do? I know I’m good-looking now, and I _guess_ I like her all right, but I don’t have time for romance! Cleansers don’t get a lot of time off. And we’ll be on this mission for weeks more, so it’s going to get awkward. I need to let her down gently.”

“And upon what do you base the conclusion that fair Tuuri has fallen for your charms?”

“She made me an All Hearts’ Day card. Look.” He slid a folded note out of his sleeve. When unfolded, it revealed a drawing of Kisu holding a heart shape with Emil’s name on it and the inscription ‘ _Glada Alla hjärtans dag, min vän!’_

“I think there may have been a misunderstanding.”

“I don’t know, it seems pretty straight-forward to me.” Emil shrugged. 

“Reynir?” Mikkel called out to the shepherd lurking at the door to the tank in his mask. “Come here for a moment.” The boy hesitated, but an impatient wave called him over. Mikkel pointed Emil’s note out to Reynir, whose face went into a kind of a contortion. He plopped his long body down onto the crate next to Mikkel and produced his own note. 

Emil sat back when he saw it. “She’s two-timing me already?!” He glanced at Reynir in disgust. Mikkel could see him assess the shepherd from his freckles to the long braid, and wondered just what Emil saw. A step down from himself? Or competition he would rather not have?

Mikkel produced his own note with the flair of a magic trick. “As I said,” he stated as he unfolded it and showed it to the others, “I think there has been some misunderstanding.”

It took a while, but it dawned on Emil first. “...It has a different meaning in Finland.”

“She’s hitting on all of us?” said Reynir, but Emil didn’t understand him, and Mikkel didn’t correct him.

Tuuri popped her head out of the tank. “I tried, but no radio contact today. They must be busy. Oh! You found my cards!”

“They’re very nice. Thank you,” said Mikkel. “I’m sorry I didn’t think to get you one.”

Tuuri jumped down and launched herself at Mikkel in a hug, squeezing him tight. “That’s all right! I’m just happy to be friends with you all!”

Reynir got a hug as well, and Tuuri danced away, chattering about going to get Sigrun, and that somebody ought to wake Lalli up for lunch. 

“Hey! I don’t get a hug?” 

“Bath first, Emil.”

-

Still wet and chilly from a quick dump into the tub, Emil dropped on all fours in the sleeping area. “Hey! Lunchtime.”

Lalli muttered something and turned towards the wall. Emil poked him between the shoulderblades. “Wake up, you dumbass. You need to eat.”

Lalli shifted again, and a pair of pale eyes glared at Emil from the shadows. He took a breath and blew it out. “Also, here.” He shoved a piece of paper at Lalli. “Now come on. I’m hungry.”

Lalli hissed. 

“Fine,” said Emil and stalked out, muttering to himself.

After a moment of yawning and waking up, Lalli crawled out from under the bed and unwrapped the crumbled piece of paper. In the light slanting through the door he saw the inscription ‘ _Hyvää ystävänpäivää!_ ’ and a drawing of two stick figures standing awkwardly next to one another. The inscription had been corrected twice, with letters interjected where they had been missing.

He screwed up his face and crumbled the note up. 

It took him almost a full minute before he unfolded and smoothed it out again, and put it away in the lining of his coat. 

It was still a stupid holiday, if anyone asked him.


End file.
